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MN: Now your second brother didn't stay in Tule Lake very long. How was he able to get out?

MU: He had applied for the University of Nebraska, he evidently had applied to other colleges, I don't know which one but he had told me later. Many of them did not accept Niseis. University of Nebraska did accept him and he wanted to be an engineer and he was able to leave camp I guess for the September, I'm not sure when the university started but if we entered in July... I know he was not there very long. And he had applied and was accepted so he left camp soon.

MN: And then your oldest brother also didn't stay in Tule Lake too long either. What did he do?

MU: He relocated. At that time there were occasions when some of the fellows were able to leave camp on contract I think and come back into camp. But in his case he did not want to return, he and his wife, he was married they lived in our block. He wanted to leave camp and so he had applied to go out and he landed up in Idaho, Payette, Idaho is where he first landed. When we moved when he came after us from Heart Mountain we rented, he leased the apple orchard like I told you in the town of Fruitland, a small town, smaller than Payette, Idaho.

MN: Now in Payette, Idaho, do you know what he was doing? Was he doing fruit farming out there also?

MU: No, row crops.

MN: Row crops.

MU: Yes.

MN: What are row crops?

MU: Potato, lettuce, beets, the kind of row cropping labor where you have to bend over. Whereas the fruit trees usually you're upright, so I remember it being hard on his back. It is, that type of farming is hard on your back and there's a snapshot I have seen where he's looking at the camera but he's half bent over and he has a hoe I think when they're blocking the lettuce. The lettuce is grown in rows and then you have to block it so that one would grow much bigger than the other ones. So we used to have to do that too, I have done that, blocking lettuce it's called. So that's what he was doing in Payette with many of his Nisei friends. I have seen snapshots of his friends.

MN: And then from Payette he went to Fruitland?

MU: When we, yeah, joined him.

MN: Later on.

MU: Yes, we leased a house there, actually it was Mr. Fisher that owned the farm, we leased his house.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.